Background
US forces found Aref's name, address, and phone number in a notebook in a bombed-out Iraqi encampment in 2003. The information was classified, and the defense, despite defense counsel having received security clearances, was provided with almost no information about the notebook.
Originally the government claimed that the notebook entry said “commander” next to Aref’s name; however, when the judge asked the government to provide the notebook page, the government admitted that there had been a “mistranslation” and the word in question was “kak,” which means “brother,” not “commander,” and is a common Kurdish term of respect. Aref is from (Iraqi Kurdistan), and his grandfather was a famous imam; Aref was already known and respected in the area.
There was no way to know what group was bombed by US forces at the encampment; at times, groups such as the Kurdistan Islamic Group, run by Ali Bapir, were bombed by the US, even though they did not oppose US forces.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) claimed that Aref is tied to Mullah Krekar, the founder of Ansar al-Islam. When Aref left Iraq as a refugee in 1994, he lived in Syria for 5 years. During that time he was approved by the UN as a refugee to be sent to a third country, which ended up being the US. While in Syria, Aref worked first as a gardener for a rich businessman, and then for the Damascus Office of the IMK (Islamic Movement in Kurdistan), an Islamic Kurdish group which had worked with the US to oppose Saddam Hussein, and which helped Kurdish refugees in Syria. IMK was never claimed to be a terrorist organization. Mullah Krekar was an IMK official who, at the end of 2001, two years after Aref had left Syria and the IMK job, split from IMK to form Ansar al Islam, which is a designated terrorist organization. While Aref had met Krekar briefly a couple of times through his IMK job, he did not really know him, and was opposed to his extremist politics.
Aref came to the US as a United Nations refugee in 1999 with his wife and three young children. He initially found work as a janitor at a local hospital and as an ambulance driver. After a year he was hired as the imam of the Masjid As Salam Mosque.
Read more about this topic: Yassin M. Aref
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